Unleashing A Woman’s Power to Breastfeed

As World Breastfeeding Week kicks off today, 1,000 Days Executive Director Lucy Sullivan published a new piece on Huffington Post to bring attention to the consequences of our collective failure to support women to breastfeed.

Women have the ability to improve the health and well-being of their children, their communities and the world because they have the ability to make milk, nature’s perfect nutrition for babies. Yet women in every corner of the world face too many barriers to start breastfeeding and continue breastfeeding successfully. This is our collective responsibility, for when we fail to support women to breastfeed, we all feel the consequences.

With targeted investments in the right policies and programs, we can save lives, improve health and build prosperity. For just $5 per baby, we could save 520,000 lives by simply ensuring that half of the world’s children are breastfed for the first 6 months of life.

This is a global call to action – for all of us. Together we can help unleash a woman’s power to breastfeed and her power to transform the world.